Mouse Hunt

Mouse Hunt is a 1997 American slapstick black comedy film written by Adam Rifkin and directed by Gore Verbinski in his feature film directorial debut. It stars Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Maury Chaykin, and Christopher Walken. The film follows two Laurel and Hardy-like brothers in their struggle against one small but crafty house mouse for possession of a mansion which was willed to them by their father. While the film is set in the late 20th century, styles range humorously from the 1940s to the 1990s. It was the first family film to be released by DreamWorks Pictures, who released it in the United States on December 19, 1997, to mixed reviews, but was a commercial success.
This was one of William Hickey's final roles before he died, and the film was dedicated in memory of him.
Plot
When the once-wealthy string magnate Rudolf Smuntz dies, he leaves his factory and an abandoned Victorian mansion to his two sons; the dutiful and optimistic Lars, and venal cynic Ernie, who has ignored the family business to become a chef; he walks out of the reading of their father's will, taking a box of cigars. At Ernie's restaurant, a cockroach crawls out of the box and into a dish prepared for the mayor, causing him to have a fatal heart attack when he accidentally bites into the cockroach's head. Ernie's restaurant is shut down; causing him to lose his career and his home. Meanwhile, cord company Zeppco International offers Lars a buyout for the string factory, but Lars refuses after remembering a promise he made his father; Lars' greedy wife, April, kicks him out. Lars and Ernie (who just started working in a cheap diner) meet up, and with nowhere else to go, they spend the night in the mansion.
The brothers soon find themselves unable to sleep due to noises, which they discover to be caused by a mouse. By chance, they also discover the blueprints of the property, which reveal that the mansion, built in 1876, was the final design of a famous architect, Charles Lyle LaRue, and it would be worth a fortune if restored. The brothers decide to renovate and auction the mansion to recover their lives. They see the mouse again and Ernie, fearing a repeat of the cockroach incident, convinces Lars they must also get rid of it. Conventional methods fail when the mouse demonstrates himself to be exceptionally intelligent. The brothers resort to extreme measures to remove the mouse, including buying a monstrous Maine Coon cat named "Catzilla" and hiring an eccentric exterminator named Caesar; the mouse drops Catzilla to his death in a dumbwaiter, and traumatizes Caesar by dragging him through the mansion using his truck's winch line.
With Ernie having borrowed against the mansion's mortgage to help pay for the renovations, the bank informs them they will be evicted in two days unless they reimburse the money. With their limited funds the brothers cannot pay their workers, causing them to go on strike. Ernie finds Zeppco's business card and arranges a meeting to secretly accept their buyout offer, betrayed that Lars had turned Zeppco down without consulting him first. Lars goes to the factory to manufacture enough string to pay off the mortgage and is met by April, who has learned of the mansion's value and takes Lars back, giving him the funds they need. Ernie's meeting with Zeppco's representatives goes awry when he attempts to impress some women and is hit by a bus. The brothers return to the mansion and find it surrounded by emergency personnel taking Caesar away after he was outsmarted by the mouse.
The brothers chase the mouse with a shotgun and accidentally ignite a bug bomb Caesar had dropped, blowing a massive hole in the floor. Lars overhears Zeppco on the answering machine, revealing Ernie's plans, and the two argue with the mouse watching. When Lars throws an orange at Ernie, he ducks underneath when it hits the mouse, who is struck and stunned, but is still alive. The brothers cannot bring themselves to kill him and mail him in a box addressed to Fidel Castro. The brothers reconcile and finish their renovations. The night of the auction, Lars discovers the postal box returned to the mansion due to insufficient postage and a hole chewed in it, while Ernie sees the mouse on his podium as he speaks to the auctioneers. As the auction begins, the brothers attempt to flush the mouse out with a garden hose, filling an inner wall of the mansion with water until it bursts, washing the auctioneers out and causing the mansion to collapse. April leaves with a wealthy bidder and the brothers are left with nothing, but take solace that the mouse was surely killed in the collapse.
The brothers spend the night in the factory, unaware the mouse has survived and followed them. Seeing their sorry state, the mouse takes pity on them and activates the factory's machinery, dropping a block of cheese into the wax boiler to produce a ball of string cheese. Inspired, the brothers renovate the factory to produce string cheese and other cheese-based products, restoring their fortunes. Lars finds a new girlfriend and runs the factory with Ernie as his chef, and the mouse as their taste-tester for new cheese combinations.
Cast
Nathan Lane as Ernie Smuntz, a man who refused heirdom to his father's string factory to become a chef.
Lee Evans as Lars Smuntz, Ernie's brother and the heir to their father's string factory.
Maury Chaykin as Alexander Falko, a wealthy LaRue collector.
Christopher Walken as Caesar, an odd and eccentric exterminator hired by the Smuntz brothers to rid them of the mouse.
Vicki Lewis as April Smuntz, Lars' money-hungry former wife.
William Hickey as Rudolf Smuntz, a string magnate and the late father of Ernie and Lars.
Eric Christmas as Ernie and Lars' lawyer.
Michael Jeter as Quincy Thorpe, a LaRue historian.
Cliff Emmich as Mayor McKrinkle.
Debra Christofferson as Ingrid, a Belgian model.
Camilla Søeberg as Hilde, a Belgian model.
Susan Blommaert as Ms. Park Avenue
Ian Abercrombie as the auctioneer.
Annabelle Gurwitch as Roxanne Atkins, a photographer.
Eric Poppick as Theodore Plumb, the banker.
Ernie Sabella as Maury, a worker at the cat shelter.
Jack Angeles as Kennel Employee
Thom Barry as a doctor (scenes deleted)
Release
Mouse Hunt was released in North America on December 19, 1997 and opened in the #4 spot. The film was released in the United Kingdom on April 3, 1998, and opened at #2, behind Titanic.
Home media
Mouse Hunt was originally released on VHS on March 10, 1998, and DVD on December 8, 1998, by DreamWorks Home Entertainment. It was released on Blu-ray on February 2, 2021, by Paramount Home Entertainment.
Reception
Box office
The film was a box office success, partially due to releasing during the Christmas and New Year's period. It grossed $6,062,922 in its opening weekend, averaging $2,817 from 2,152 theaters. In its second weekend, it stayed at #4 and increased by 60 percent, making $9,702,770, averaging $4,428 from 2,191 theaters, and bringing its 10-day gross to $21,505,569. In its third weekend, it once again stayed at #4 and dropped by only 13 percent, making $8,418,001, averaging $3,804 from 2,213 theaters, and bringing its 17-day gross to $40,021,527. It closed on July 1, 1998, with a final gross of $61,917,389 in the North American market and $60,500,000 in other territories for a worldwide total of $122,417,389.
Critical response
Mouse Hunt received mixed reviews from film critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 44% of 33 critics had given the film a positive review. The critics consensus reads: "Mouse Hunt gets trapped under the weight of its excessive slapstick antics." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 54 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, calling it "not very funny, and maybe couldn't have been very funny no matter what, because the pieces for comedy are not in place... A comedy that hasn't assigned sympathy to some characters and made others hateful cannot expect to get many laughs, because the audience doesn't know who to laugh at, or with." His colleague Gene Siskel disagreed and liked the film.
Regarding the digital special effects, Ebert deemed the film "an excellent example of the way modern advances in special effects can sabotage a picture (Titanic is an example of effects being used wisely). Because it is possible to make a movie in which the mouse can do all sorts of clever things, the filmmakers have assumed incorrectly that it would be funny to see the mouse doing them."
See also
List of American films of 1997
References
External links
official website at the Wayback Machine (archived December 2, 1998)
1997 films
1997 comedy films
1997 directorial debut films
1997 black comedy films
American children's comedy films
American black comedy films
American screwball comedy films
American slapstick comedy films
Films about mice and rats
Films about cats
Films about death
Films about brothers
Films set in country houses
American films about revenge
Films directed by Gore Verbinski
Films scored by Alan Silvestri
DreamWorks Pictures films
Animal Logic films
1990s English-language films
Films produced by Bruce Cohen
1990s American films